Photo courtesy of Eureka High School
By Ray Hamill — With a new home field and a roster than gained valuable experience a year ago, the Eureka Loggers will be hoping to turn the corner on what has been a difficult few years this fall.
The largest school in the Big 4 has not enjoyed a winning season since the Covid-shortened campaign in the spring of 2021.
Since then they have gone 10-38, including a disappointing 2-19 in conference.
However, head coach Sam Edmonds is optimistic the Loggers will be far more competitive this fall.
They certainly have plenty of varsity experience on the roster.
Last year, Edmonds’ team suffered through an inordinate amount of injuries, forcing the coaches to utilize a younger lineup.
This fall, most of those players are back and all of the returners saw playing time during the 2025 injury-ravaged campaign.
“I have a lot of juniors and seniors with a lot of varsity experience,” Edmonds said.
After a long offseason, the players are eager to return to action, and with a new all-weather field at Albee Stadium they’re looking forward to returning home after playing home games at the Redwood Bowl for the past couple of years during construction.
The offseason has gone well for the program, which goes into the preseason with more than 70 players on the varsity and JV rosters combined.
“We’ve been in the weight room and practicing four days a week,” Edmonds said. “We’re definitely having some growing pains, but I think we’ll be fine. I think we’ll be competitive this year.”
Edmonds is hoping the experience pays off and wants to see his players battle hard on every snap.
“The biggest thing is to play with heart,” he said. “That’s one thing we’ve been preaching to the kids, to play with physicality and heart.”
A new look H-DNL schedule this year sees all eight of the league’s 11-player programs face off against each other once each, although only games against conference teams will count in the race for the Big 4 and Little 4 championships.
The Loggers will open the season with three straight non-league games, kicking off at home against Windsor on Saturday, Aug. 29.
They then travel to Shasta before hosting Marshfield.
Edmonds is hoping the new field will be ready for the season opener — and for the H-DNL preseason scrimmage on Aug. 22 — with the final touches still being applied.
If it’s not ready to go before the end of the month, then the Loggers will host Windsor at Cal Poly Humboldt’s Redwood Bowl instead.
